Writer: Saurabh Shukla
Cast: Jitendra Kumar, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Annu Kapoor, Shrikant Verma, Kiran Khoje, Sunil Palwal
Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
Streaming on: Prime Video
It’s hard to have a strong opinion about a film like Dry Day. Did I like it? No. Did I dislike it? No and yes. Will my life be exactly the same after watching it? Yes. Indifference does not bode well for a social satire, especially one that’s too chaotic to deliver a single message. The storytelling is obsolete: There’s a Holi song, an ‘item’ song (remember that?), a baby-shower song, wily politicians and transformed politicians, sermons, hunger strikes, quirky reporters, self-immolations, and a secret recording that exposes the baddie on a public stage. It insists on flaunting a balance sheet of comedy and drama, commentary and entertainment. The film revolves around the ills of alcoholism in a small town, but in its pursuit of meaning, ends up promoting alcohol bans as a one-stop solution to all the country’s problems. Blame the bottle, not the system. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the setting is fictional.
Dry Day stars Jitendra Kumar as Gannu, a booze-guzzling rogue who dreams of becoming a corporator in the political party he works for. His boss, Dauji (Annu Kapoor), has kept him hanging for four years. Gannu’s strong-willed wife (Shriya Pilgaonkar) detests his drinking so much that she threatens to abort her pregnancy if he doesn’t get his act together. But Gannu’s life unravels when his antics get him fired from the party, and disgraced in front of his family. In a last-ditch attempt to quit spirits (as you can tell, I’m running out of synonyms for alcohol), he conflates his own political aspirations with a vote-milking protest to ban alcohol. The film is already at the one-hour mark by now, and it’s only just coming to the point. Or not. Because Gannu then turns into an accidental messiah – one that’s worshipped like a God by the long-suffering wives in the neighbourhood.
The women, whose husbands waste away at the government liquor shop, swear by this one man who simply wanted to get sober for his wife. She goes from regretting her marriage to expressing her love with: “I’m glad you didn’t wear a condom that night”. Just like that, he becomes a political force and media sensation. He morphs into a familiar figure – wrapped in a shawl, undertaking a padayatra, followed by disciples, advocating for prohibition, teasing comparisons to a modern-day Mahatma Gandhi (or ‘Gannu’). That’s about as ambitious as Dry Day gets.
Every other scene seems to be crammed with people and noise and energy and objects. The staging aims to tickle, but mostly chases its own tail. For example, when an inebriated Gannu reaches Delhi with his minions to gate-crash an opponent’s rally, nothing makes sense. The editing is all over the place, the humour is strained, and there is no rhythm to the activity on screen – What exactly are they doing? What is the endgame? Is alcoholism a licence for an everything-goes brand of film-making? Why is everyone rambling? There are several moments like these. There are times when the film just looks like it’s biding time, stretching its hands, yawning, cracking its knuckles and waiting. It says something that it’s only been a few hours, and I already can’t remember the specifics of the story.
The sheer density of information in a frame feels like an attempt at world-building and cultural fabric. The result, however, is rarely coherent. It’s never clear what the plan of Gannu’s rivals are. It’s never clear if Gannu himself is an enlightened soul or a humbled one. His reluctant activism is an interesting track – bringing to mind Anil Kapoor in Shankar’s Nayak: The Real Hero (2001) – but it also reduces addiction to a narrative device. I get that alcoholism is a very ‘cinematic’ condition, and it’s nice that Dry Day circumvents that, but the lack of purpose is jarring. The intent might be to convey the relationship between politics and systemic abuse, yet the film fails to elevate its gaze beyond cliches and social posturing.
Jitendra Kumar has that agitated Ayushmann-Khurana-ish energy about him; his Gannu goes through a similar transformative journey. But his performance is not just undercut by a scattershot script, it’s also undone by the nasal tone he brings to his hinterland dialect. The effort is too visible. It’s not about authenticity so much as emotional continuity – and Gannu always feels like a man who’s in two films instead of being torn between two identities. The moment he improves as a husband and potential father, the conflict of his celebrity status comes to the fore in the most convoluted manner.
Among the supporting cast, Annu Kapoor and Shrikant Verma play the same old shifty characters. Shriya Pilgaonkar is underutilised in a narrative that’s driven by her character’s tenacity. The wife Nirmala, like the other women in the film, are reduced to pawns on Gannu’s chequered board, existing to fix him and offset the levity of messy men and their power games. It’s not the most original template in the world. Less so in 2023, when even formulas can be fun if it’s calibrated or reimagined a little. Unfortunately, Dry Day remains dry, slight and content with its dated form. If the film were a person, it’d be the kind that claims it doesn’t need a drink because life is so intoxicating. Did I say it’s hard to have a strong opinion about the film? I lied.